For the Thrifty, Quality Matters MORE

Today I had the opportunity to go to lunch with my team at work. It was a company sponsored working lunch (which is a polite way of saying that I didn't have to pay for it). This was a particularly nice treat because I've been making a concerted effort to bring my own lunch to work each day. First, it allows me to eat healthier, second it wastes less time than finding someplace to eat and waiting for food, and third it undoubtedly saves us money. In fact, we've been pushing hard to eat out less overall. Interestingly, this means that quality is even more important when we do.

This goes against the conventional wisdom that saving money is all about taking the cheapest option and forgoing quality. In fact, this is what being frugal always implied to me: a choice to focus on price over quality. I find that as we become conscious of our spending however, quality is actually more important than price. Now that we're eating out less, eating out is more of a special treat, which means that we can afford to pay a bit more if we choose to but it had better be darned good!

So back to lunch today. We went to a rather tony restaurant where my small plate of pasta cost $15 for lunch... and it was terrible! Really bad. And you know I was relieved that I didn't have to pay for it, because if I had I would have been angry. In fact lately it seems that when we have made the choice to go out it hasn't been as good as we'd have liked. And the more we spend, the more disappointed we seem to be. One recent exception is a local Teriyaki place that's actually really cheap. You always get plenty of food and it's always delicious. Typical plates are $6-8 -- for dinner! But while I love that price, what's more important is that the quality is equally good. It really does feel like a treat.

I know that restaurants struggle with the slowing economy. Food and operating costs have surely increased for them just as for us. But what they have to remember is that a restaurant is a luxury. It's a treat that we choose to enjoy, not something that's required. You may have to adjust your menu or prices to cope, but you cannot get away with poor quality or service. When we were eating all the time a bad experience, while unpleasant, was only temporary. Tomorrow night we'd just eat someplace else. But when dinner out is a rare treat the quality matters even more.

It's the same with many things. If spending $9 on a movie ticket is a special event, you want the movie to be good. If you stop buying every new video game release, you're going to be more selective about the one you do buy. When clothing purchases are planned specifically for occasional wardrobe-building (as opposed to your weekend hobby) then those clothes had better last. That means quality.

The past decades of overconsumption have made quantity more important than quality. If you see every new release in the theater it's OK if some suck. If you buy every new game it doesn't matter if you never play half of them. If you come home with bags of clothing all the time who cares if some fall apart or go out of style after only two wearings? But that's changing now for many people. Because being thrifty means seeking out quality as well as value. And thrifty has come back into vogue.